Neon Knights and The Retro Hunter – Leigh-on-Sea

Neon Knights Arcade & Cafe

With the abundance of new retro arcades opening up North, arcade gamers down South have felt a little deprived.  Neon Knights is a fantastic new arcade which goes someway to address this.

This venue is all about recreating the arcade experience in the most authentic way possible.  The owners, Ally and Dave have combined their arcade collections to realise their dream of opening a classic arcade.  “This is a labour of love for us,” explained Dave.  “The important thing for us is enabling those that loved these machines to play them again, and those that didn’t get the chance to play, the opportunity now.”

The arcade has an absolutely awesome line up of games and machines.  This includes eighties classics, such as OutRun, Pac-Man and Space Invaders, greats from the nineties, including Street Fighter II’, Sunset Riders and Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, and even a couple of cool games from the noughties.  It’s not just the big hits though, there are some more obscure games and very rare machines to please the hardcore arcade gamers.  There is a fantastic mix of UK manufactured machines, US dedicated cabs and Japanese Candy.  Pay on the door and all of the games are set to free play.

Here is a walk round video.

Here are some of my gaming highlights.

Golden Axe – Sega – 1989

This is currently one of my daughter’s favourite games and she was really pleased to see it. 

We enjoyed playing it through to the end, with my daughter being the battle-axe wielding dwarf, Gillius Thunderhead.  She loves defeating Death Adder, rescuing the king and princess and watching that incredible end sequence.  She has even made up her own names for some of the enemies, including the Pink La La Knights and Big Man in a Diaper!  It’s the first arcade game she’s completed, both at home and now in an arcade.

Donkey Kong – Nintendo – 1981

Neon Knights have really spoiled us with both Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Junior.  The former is an extremely rare US Cabaret.  I really enjoyed playing this beautiful little cab.

I definitely have a love-hate relationship with this game.  I own the full upright version.  On one hand it’s a fantastic looking cab and such an iconic game.  On the other it surely has to be one of the hardest games ever, absolutely brutal with very little margin for error.  Maybe it’s me being rubbish at it. 

Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles – Konami – 1989

Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles was installed in an incredibly rare Japanese Sega Swing.  I must say I was mightily impressed to see one of these.

Just look at that four player control panel, it’s absolutely stunning!

TMHT is the perfect game for this awesome machine, and my two year old boy sat nicely on my lap whilst I gave the Foot Clan a thorough thrashing!

X-Men vs. Street Fighter – Capcom – 1996

Now this is pretty cool!  I picked up this board from a Raid and put it up for sale a couple of months later after having it repaired.  It was picked up by someone on Ukvac, and after they sent me their Leigh-on-Sea address, I enquired whether they were the same people opening a new retro arcade.  It turns out it was!  The game had sat in a box for years in an Op’s shed, and it was great seeing it back in an arcade once again, being played and enjoyed.  You can read all about that Raid here.

http://planetharriers.blogspot.com/2019/07/arcade-operator-raid-in-back-of-beyond.html

An absolutely epic crossover.  I remember seeing the first screen shots in Games Master magazine, along with Street Fighter EX and Street Fighter Zero, and how excited I was.

Blazing Star – SNK / Yumekobo - 1998

I love my MVS and was pleased to see two extremely nice Neo cabs, an Electrocoin Neo-Geo Sports Point and a Lordsvale.

Both machines had an excellent selection of games.  However Blazing Star was the highlight for me, an absolutely awesome horizontal shooter.  This is another game I sold to them along with X-Men vs. Street Fighter, but this one was from an Op in Wales.

I recognised a couple of machines from the Happidrome arcade in Southend, including this Pac-Man. 

During my last visit to the Happidrome, the owner mentioned that he was thinking of selling some of his classic cabs.  Whilst I was sad to hear this at the time, they couldn’t have ended up in a more perfect new home.

Sunset Riders and WWF WrestleFest were in the Electrocoin Xenons.  I remember playing these games a lot down the seafront back in the day. 

The line up changes regularly, and since my visit Captain Commando, ESPgaluda, Final Fight and The Punisher have been installed.  Check out their Facebook page for updates.

Some more pics of Neon Knights.

With its friendly atmosphere, fantastic line up and some very uncommon machines, we had an awesome time at Neon Knights and can’t wait to go back. 

The Retro Hunter

Next door to Neon Knights is The Retro Hunter, a shop selling retro consoles, games, toys and collectables. 

I’ve been wanting to visit for a while and it was great to finally check it out.  Buying games online is all well and good, but there’s just something about browsing shelves stocked with games and having the game in your hand, checking it over before purchase.  Ally was extremely helpful and I picked up some Megadrive titles as well as Space Harrier for the Master System. 

Here are my pick ups.